Machines for positioning initially disorderly arranged articles in a predetermined position and in an aligned arrangement are common in several industrial sectors. Machines for righting and arranging bottles or empty containers in an orderly manner and in an upright position, resting on their base and having the filling opening at their upper part, are used especially in the packaging sector art. Generally said filling opening forms a neck constituting a geometric shape differentiated from the bottle or container in an end located opposite to another end constituting a base, thus being defined an imaginary longitudinal axis between both ends.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,295,659 discloses an operating principle which has turned out to be the most commonly used in many kinds of machines for positioning articles, on the basis of the use of said differentiated geometric shape for righting the articles. Such a principle comprises first arranging the articles individually in a housing, so that the differentiated geometric shape faces one end or the other of the housing, and then dropping the article by gravity through the open bottom wall of the housing inside a drop chute whose funnel comprises end stop and support configurations intended for keeping said differentiated geometrical shape whichever its relative position with respect to the housing may be, in order that the article always falls on its base. For this purpose, at least one of said end stop configurations has such a shape that it forces the article to be placed differently in the drop chute funnel depending on said relative position of the differentiated shape, so that said shape is always located above one of said support configurations. The machine adopts a rotary shape in which a plurality of said cavities intended for receiving an article are arranged radially in the periphery of a circular structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,662,872 discloses a rotary positioning machine intended for bottles or empty light containers, wherein a series of housings are attached to the rotary structure, arranged tangentially in its periphery around a container that receives the articles in a disorderly arrangement and that is fitted with means for loading in each housing a container or a bottle in a flat position, having its longitudinal axis pre-oriented according to the tangential direction of the housing and having its neck either at the rear or at the front with respect to the rotation direction. Each of said housings has an open bottom wall over a drop chute which moves together with it. A stationary support plane comprising two interruptions in two opposite sections of the turn path is located between the open bottom walls of the housings and their respective drop chutes. Through said interruptions the articles fall by gravity inside the drop chute. Said end stops and supports, located in certain areas of said housings, are intended for holding said neck when the container falls inside the drop chute through said support plane interruption, so that the container is always in an upright position inside the drop chute, having its neck in the upper part and its base in its lower part. Finally a baffle means transfers the containers oriented in an upright position from the drop chutes to an exit conveyor. This machine further includes a partition wall that divides vertically a lower part of each drop chute into two equal compartments, and a diverter plate arranged in a hinged fashion in an upper end of said partition wall and actuated by actuating means so as to alternately change its position, in order to guide the articles falling at either of both compartments, the machine thereby being able to load during a whole turn two articles in each drop chute through the same peripheral housing.
Nevertheless, in this rotary positioning machine, the housings of entrance and the compartments of the drop chutes have appropriate fixed dimensions for articles of an only size. In order to adapt the machine to articles of different sizes it would be necessary to replace these housings and drop chutes, among other elements, which represents a high cost in time in the operation of substitution, a greater investment in the manufacture of the alternative elements and a greater cost of necessary storage for said elements.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,435,333 patent of the present applicant, discloses a rotary machine that obeys to the same principle although with a single interruption in the support plane and an only enclosure in each drop chute. Nevertheless, this machine is adapted to adjust to the handling of bottles or containers of different sizes by means of the incorporation of means for moving the end stops and supports located in the housings and destined to maintain the neck of the container when this one falls within the drop chute, as well as to move the sidewalls of the drop chute and other elements destined to fit the machine to articles of different sizes. All the movable elements of all the housings and drop chutes are displaced simultaneously by means of a relative angular displacement of a circular, coaxial substructure, to which these movable elements are fixed.
An object of the present invention is to provide a machine for righting and aligning articles by means of drop chutes with multiple compartments based on the mentioned principle to drop the articles in a drop chute, provided with four subcompartments in each drop chute.
Another object of the present invention is the one to provide a machine like the one described in the previous paragraph in which each drop chute includes two compartments and means to divide each one of these compartments into two subcompartments or to adjust automatically the housings of entrance, the compartments as well as the articles of different sizes.